Daniel’s dissertation is an interdisciplinary history of how “numbness” came to be studied and disciplined to model the effects of modernity on the human body in Canada and the United States during the 20th century. Through studies of sensory deprivation, overstimulation, isolation, and addiction, this project traces how numbness became an object of scientific and…

Hannah’s project, “Delivering the Universal Reformation: Letters, Networks, and Intellectual Exchange in the Hartlib Circle, 1658–1662,” examines the final years of the Hartlib Circle, one of the seventeenth century’s largest intellectual networks. Historians have explained the group’s decline by pointing to political change, the increasing specialization of science and medicine, and changing religious ideas. Hannah’s…

Danielle’s doctoral research draws on extensive interview (n=42) and archival data to consider the significance of collectively remembering, preserving and sharing mad people’s activist histories. The central question guiding her work is: What is the significance of the historical emergence of consumer/survivor businesses to the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement? She explores that question by examining how in…

Matthew’s project examines the origin, evolution, and impact of self-help literature written by American mental health practitioners during the interwar period. It focuses on the work of three authors: the psychologist H. Addington Bruce, the psychiatrist Abraham Myerson, and the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Karl Menninger. These experts published multiple self-help books and articles that communicated…

On the Table, In the Books traces the place of “conversion therapy” (CT) in Canada’s medical education system during the mid-twentieth century. Medical professionals in North America historically framed non-conformity to cisgender/heterosexual behaviour as a health issue, legitimizing psychiatric and psychological attempts at “curing” 2S/LGBTQIA+ sexualities, genders and bodies across time. These treatments were not,…